


Carpe Diem

by etspes



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Ancient Rome, Dinner, M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-26
Updated: 2010-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 04:31:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etspes/pseuds/etspes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Horace is shameless, Vergil is awkward, Maecenas matchmakes (sort of), Agrippa gets a clue, and everyone but Maecenas gets laid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carpe Diem

**Author's Note:**

> The five men who make appearances in this story own themselves entirely, and I lay no claim to them or to their poetry. The poem herein is Horace's Odes 1.xi, and a loose translation might be:
> 
> You should not seek – it is wicked to know – what end for me and what for you  
> the gods have in mind, Leuconoe, nor should you attempt the Babylonian ciphers.  
> Is it not better to suffer it, whatever it is?  
> Whether Jupiter has marked many winters, or whether this is the last,  
> which now the Tyrrhenian sea weakens against the opposite rocks.  
> You should sense, you should strain wine, and, you should trim  
> your long-ranging hopes into a shallow space.  
> While we talk, hateful age will have fled:  
> Seize the day, leaving little trust to coming things.
> 
> Comments and criticisms are ever appreciated, as long as you don't tell Octavian/Agrippa/Horace/Vergil/Maecenas what blasphemous things I've done to them...  
> read on!

            “Horatius!” Maecenas thundered from across the table. “Put away your damned wax tablet and join us!” There was no trace of guilt in Horace’s sly grin as he looked up at Maecenas.

“Hazard,” he said cheekily, “of being a poet,” and he tucked the tablet into Vergil’s toga. Vergil jumped as Horace’s hand brushed his thigh, less than subtly, and Maecenas’ grin grew. He turned to Octavian, who was sitting beside him.

“Poets,” he explained, “make for the best companions.”

“I find,” Octavian replied, rather deliberately, every inch the _princeps_, “that one’s companions are a reflection of oneself,” and Agrippa’s eyes burned from across the table. Maecenas raised his eyebrows.

“Insightful, Gaius,” he said, “and after so much wine.” Octavian ran his finger around the rim of his untouched glass, his gaze meeting Agrippa’s, dipping the tip of his index finger into the wine, almost accidentally. Vergilius cleared his throat awkwardly, and Maecenas nearly fell all over himself to pour water, and the subject was lost in the ensuing confusion.

~

            “C-c-ca-carpe d-diem, Quintus?” Vergil managed on the walk back, his eyes skimming the tablet he’d retrieved from the folds of his toga. The thing hung on his thin, gangly frame like a fog on a flower—it utterly enveloped him, and he looked both ridiculous and lovely at once. Horace sped up to keep pace, trying to watch his feet and not Vergil.

“Did you not see them?” he asked delightedly. Vergil looked askance.

“See whom?”

“Slow down, would you?” Horace panted. “You are too tall for anyone’s good.” Vergil obligingly slowed.

“See whom?” he repeated. Horace’s grin widened.

“Why, Publius. You didn’t, did you?” Vergil’s expression was growing impatient, as it would when Horace engaged in his games. Vergil did not take well to teasing—he had seen much of it at Rome, and he took it far too much to heart, especially from those he respected. Not, one might argue, that he particularly respected Horace’s opinion all that often, but at the least was very fond of the man, and so it exasperated him all the same. Horace had pushed the lines too far once too often, and it tended to result in unpleasantness.

“Our dear _princeps_,” he said, savoring what was apparently news, “and his trusty general.” Vergil stopped in his tracks, looking horrified. He was fond of Augustus, and Horace winced. There had been arguments about this. They usually consisted of Horace trying to explain himself, and Vergil not listening in stubborn, stony silence.

“I don’t disparage them!” Horace assured him hastily, holding up his hands as though to ward him off. “I simply mention that Agrippa looked as though he might consume Caesar rather than the pheasant and Caesar, well…let us say he was enjoying it.”

~

Later, as Horace rescued Vergil’s belt from his fumbling fingers, unfastening it rather more deftly and gently freeing Vergil from his tunic, he defended himself.

“I meant the poem in their honor, as advice, really, nothing more. I cannot imagine that in their…position,” Vergil reddened, and Horace grinned and continued, dropping his own tunic on the floor, “that in their position, they are in much of a way to indulge themselves.” Vergil dipped his head, fidgeting with his fingers in absence of a toga.

“Th-that’s a disrespectful thing to say, Quintus,” he admonished. “Caesar has a w-w-w-w—” Horace looked surprised, not waiting for the last word to force its way off of Vergil’s seizing tongue.

“When has that ever stopped anyone?” Vergil sighed and collapsed on the mattress. “I don’t understand,” he lectured, shaking his head, “why you do not like him. He has taken good care of you, and me as well, and he is trying to do his b-best by Rome. Is that not good enough for you?” Horace’s eyebrows rose.

“Quite a lot of words from you,” he murmured as he sat beside Vergil on the bed, laying a hand on his chest and pushing him lightly backwards. “You are upset, then.” Vergil shook his head slightly as Horace settled himself on Vergil’s thighs.

“N-n-not upset, exactly,” he stuttered. “J-j-j…” but what he was ‘just’ never quite made it off his tongue , because Horace was whispering the words of his poem into Vergil’s skin, amidst Vergil’s sighs.

_Tu ne quaesieris – scire nefas – quem mihi, quem tibi_

_finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios_

_temptaris numeros. Ut melius, quicquid erit, pati!_

_Seu plures hiemes, seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,_

_quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare_

_Tyrrhenum. Sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi_

_spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida_

_aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero._

~

            Maecenas reclined at the table, his fingers steepled around his wine glass, contemplating Agrippa.

“An interesting dinner,” he said after a moment. He tilted his head.

“What do you suppose Horatius was writing?” Agrippa’s brow flinched.

“I had not noticed.” Maecenas’ grin grew.

“I cannot imagine you did,” he said, amused. “There were, after all, more interesting people.” Maecenas let go of the glass and leaned back on his couch. “I shall answer my own question,” he suggested grandly. “He was writing for you. You were simply too concerned with watching Gaius’ mouth to notice Quintus’ hands.” He smirked. “Although Publius was not.” Agrippa was immediately on his feet, his stance broad and his hands curling into whitened fists. It was, Maecenas supposed, as good a time as any to go. He had gotten Agrippa’s attention, which was better than Horace had managed with his scribblings. Standing as well, he brushed himself off, fussing with his toga as he turned to go. He ambled toward the door, careful to keep his posture careless. When he reached the exit, he turned and added, as though it were an afterthought,

“I would not mention it to you but for his benefit, Marcus—I have no need to do favors by you. But he is waiting for you. He has been all evening.” And then he left, leaving Agrippa stunned and silent and sealed behind him.

~

It was, of course, not possible for Horace to know anything but what was happening in his own bed—as though that weren’t distracting enough on its own.

There was a choice, which consisted of giving Maecenas the satisfaction of being right (as though Maecenas might ever find out) but denying himself, and giving himself the pleasure of having a willing Octavian and damning Maecenas to fuck his own haughty musings in Hades. Octavian won, and the fire in his eyes nearly knocked Agrippa over from the moment he entered the bedroom.

Horace would not have known, as he made love to Vergil with his hands and his voice, that Agrippa was worshiping Octavian with his own mouth and that Octavian was crying out his name. Horace did not, of course, know that as he touched Vergil and felt him groan, Agrippa was consumed under Octavian’s fingertips. Horace was unaware, as Vergil’s awkward body pressed beautifully atop him, of anything but his own pleasure, and of Vergil.

But Horace was always one to accept a concession (and indeed to batter it out of an opponent), and so he might have been pleased, might have smiled, had he in fact known—

that Agrippa’s hands were skilled in much more than battle, and that Octavian’s head was thrown back, his face a perfect, open canvas of pleasure, seeking and demanding and praying and cursing, splayed magnificently across the bed, his milk-white skin a tableau under Agrippa’s dark olive, his cries muffled by Agrippa’s mouth, the long sinews of bodies stretching to pleasure one another, destroyed and renewed,

and that at the precise moment when Agrippa pushed himself into Octavian, taking him, Horace whispered into the dusting of freckles on Vergil’s wiry, shuddering frame once more, “Is it not better to endure it, whatever it is?”

“_Carpe diem_,” Vergil gasped into Horace’s hair.


End file.
